Waffles With Syrup And Disinformation

October 9, 1986|By James J. Kilpatrick , Universal Press Syndicate

WASHINGTON — Well, we were had -- we of the press. We were conned. That is the long and short of last week's disclosure that the White House in August engaged in a program of planned ''disinformation'' about Moammar Gadhafi.

It was a harebrained scheme from the outset. There was great risk, as officials privately have acknowledged, that the plot could backfire -- that it could provoke the Libyan leader in unpredictably dangerous ways. Nevertheless, with the president's approval, the program went forward. On Aug. 25 a story was planted in The Wall Street Journal to the effect that the United States and Libya once more were on a ''collision course.'' The Journal did not buy the leaked information uncritically, but its usual sources tended to confirm the accuracy of the tale.

The trouble was that the tale was basically untrue. As Secretary of State George Shultz has conceded, relations with Libya at that point were ''relatively quiescent.'' Gadhafi was not mounting new terrorist attacks, and the United States was not about to move against him militarily. The idea was that Gadhafi should be made to THINK these uneasy thoughts. And how was this to be accomplished? Why, sir, through a program of ''disinformation.''

On Oct. 2 President Reagan met with a group of 25 columnists and senior correspondents. The story of the ''disinformation'' scheme had just broken in The Washington Post. Reagan seemed genuinely perplexed and bewildered by the uproar. He said:

''Our position -- this was wrong and false -- our position has been one of which, after we took the action we felt we had to take, and I still believe was the correct thing to do, our position has been one in which we would just as soon have Mr. Gadhafi go to bed every night wondering what we might do.''

Thank you, Mr. President.

The correspondents then had a shot at the one senior official in the best of all positions to confirm or to deny the authenticity of national security adviser John Poindexter's memo outlining the disinformation campaign as it was reported in the Post. The official waffled. He was followed to the podium by yet another senior official who proceeded to pour syrup on the waffle. It never had been intended to ''use'' the press. There was no intention to mislead us. We must be careful to distinguish ''between deception and disinformation.'' It is a distinction almost invisible to the human eye.

This was not the first time an administration has gotten into trouble of this kind. One recalls, for example, Robert McNamara's blunt disclosure that John F. Kennedy's ''missile gap'' did not exist. A dozen other examples could be cited, and credibility has suffered in every one of them.

The affair will not be wholly disastrous if the president's men will daily ask themselves a probing question: If this particular secret memo is leaked -- and it probably will be leaked -- how will it look in the papers? If Poindexter had asked that question about his cockamamie memorandum last August, the memo never would have seen the light of day.